In most automotive assembly plants, a vehicle body is first fabricated and the doors are then attached. The automotive vehicle goes through the painting process with the doors attached to ensure proper color matching between the paint on the doors and the remainder of the vehicle body. As the vehicle body proceeds along the assembly process, the doors are left open as the assemblers install the instrument panel, the seating and other interior components. To increase the quality of installation and to address other ergonomic issues, there is a growing tendency to remove the vehicle doors from the vehicle body after the painting process to allow greater ease of access to the interior of the vehicle and then reattach the doors to the vehicle further down the assembly process. This technique of automotive assembly is called "doors off" processing.
To accomplish the above-noted technique of automotive assembly, various removable door hinges have previously been brought forth. The majority, if not all, of the prior removable-type door hinges do not include a hold open device or require that the hold open device be disassembled. Therefore, a separate hold open device is utilized. (Hold open devices are the mechanism which biases the vehicle door to stay in the open position when the vehicle door is open.)